Gametophytic apomixis is a form of asexual reproduction through seeds. It exists in numerous angiosperms, and close to 400 apomictic species have been listed. However, no apomictic plants are found among the main cultivated cereals (corn, wheat or rice), but only in wild plants, a few cultivated fodder species, and certain fruit species. Apomixis is a genetically controlled mechanism. Apomictic plants develop female gametes without prior meiosis. The gametes thus formed contain a genome identical to that of the somatic tissue from which they are derived. The development of the embryo from these gametes takes place without fertilization by a male gamete, i.e. by parthenogenesis. The genome of the embryo thus formed is therefore strictly identical to that of its mother plant, without paternal contribution. Apomixis is therefore a mode of cloning through seeds which ensures that genotypes are perpetuated identically through the generations.
The use of apomixis in a controlled manner in cultivated species offers many potential applications. These applications relate to the propagation of unstable genotypes, the control of pollen contaminations, methods for improving plants, and methods for the commercial production of seeds.
None of these applications can be envisioned in the main cultivated species such as wheat, corn, rice and the like, on the basis of current technologies. No apomictic forms are in fact known in these various species, and no genetic system which makes it possible to induce apomixis in sexual plants is known.
Many laboratories have, over the past years, endeavored to develop apomictic plants, either by attempting to transfer the determinants of apomixis from wild plants to cultivated plants, or by inducing apomictic phenotypes in sexual plants by mutagenesis. Neither of these two approaches has produced an apomictic genotype in a species in which this mode of reproduction did not exist beforehand.
Results recently published in the journal Nature (Ravi, M., Marimuthu, M. P., and Siddiqi, I. (2008). Gamete formation without meiosis in Arabidopsis. Nature 451: 1121-1124.), show, in Arabidopsis, that the inactivation of a gene involved in meiosis, called DYAD, the function of which is to regulate chromatid cohesion during meiosis, makes it possible to produce approximately 0.1% of gametes which escape meiosis. The remainder of the gametes, and therefore 99.9% of the descendants, are sterile. It is even probable that the frequency of non-meiotic gametes is not significantly different, in these mutant plants, than that in sexual plants, and that these gametes in fact become apparent only because the mutation kills, moreover, all the gametes normally derived from sexuality.
Another recent study (Erfurth, I., Jolivet, S., Froger, N., Catrice, O., Novatchkova, M., and Mercier, R. (2009). Turning meiosis into mitosis. PLoS Biol. 7: e1000124), shows that it is possible, in Arabidopsis, to change meiotic division into mitotic division through the simultaneous activation of three genes involved in meiosis (osd1/Atspo11-1/Atrec8). The triple mutant produces functional diploid gametes. However, these gametes are fertilized, the descendants are not therefore apomictic, and it is not known whether this result is transposable to species other than Arabidopsis. 
The work by the inventors in the field have shown that it is possible to induce a completely or partially apomictic phenotype in corn by manipulating the expression of particular genes. The seeds produced evade meiotic reproduction and are fertile. These results advantageously apply to other cultivated plants such as rice or wheat.